0:01

Because I had a pretty good life. I had a lot

0:04

of friends that I spent a lot of time sitting on the beach,

0:06

drinking beer. Life was good. So it's

0:08

like, okay. Well, if you're gonna go do something, it's

0:10

gotta be a masterpiece. It's gotta be something

0:12

like really cool, like, really incredible.

0:15

These folks are smoking opium. Those

0:18

guys are smoking ashish. There's

0:20

alcohol. There's drugs weapons.

0:22

And I'm twenty two I would sit

0:24

in the corner, mine my own business, and

0:26

just watch. And

0:31

so to answer your question, like like how's was born,

0:33

I was just focused on pushing the edge,

0:35

pushing the boundary. That's kind of the one thing I

0:37

didn't talk about. I was exploring myself.

0:40

I think one of the hardest things to do

0:42

And I think actually maybe the hardest thing to do

0:44

is to hold.

0:47

The question you're asking, which is what is a theoretical

0:49

max, is not question that that person

0:51

asked. I

0:53

guess the thing that I learned was don't

0:55

think it's figured out. It's kinda mind

0:57

blowing. How much of it hasn't been figured

0:59

out? Minnis

1:01

for name, Morkos. I'm forty years

1:04

old. I'm currently located in

1:06

cloudy, San Francisco. I founded

1:08

a company called Alice Technologies.

1:10

Alice is an acronym. It stands for artificial

1:13

intelligence construction engineering. We thought

1:15

it sounded about an a, so it was became

1:18

Alice. Alice is the world's first

1:20

generative construction simulator.

1:22

And so what that means, it's a software

1:25

that can take a construction project.

1:27

So you're building a shopping mall,

1:29

a hospital, an airport, puts

1:31

in our system, and it generates six

1:33

million different ways of building those are with one

1:35

crane, two cranes over time, and

1:38

then figures out that fastest or cheapest

1:40

way to do it. On average, it figures out

1:42

how to save about seventeen percent on construction

1:44

duration and about thirteen percent on labor

1:46

and equipment costs. We spun it

1:48

out of my PhD at Stanford

1:50

University, where I'm currently also

1:52

in a junk professor of construction

1:54

matter. So I think that's kind of the the summary

1:56

of of Alice and what it does.

1:58

Well, thank you for doing the interview.

2:01

Great to meet her. It was a joke. I was acting

2:03

like the interviews over, but I do like that.

2:05

I think Alice is much easier than artificial

2:08

This is the a l. Right. The

2:10

l. Artificial okay. Yeah. I'm, like,

2:12

I'm missing something. So Artificial in

2:15

Bellingham's construction engineering. Right? There Intelligence

2:19

construction. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah.

2:21

But it was it was kinda like we we were always like,

2:23

I mean, me personally, I was like, I just don't wanna build

2:25

another engineering software

2:27

or, like, engineering company with

2:29

boxes and tables

2:31

and spreadsheets. So, like, make it

2:33

sexy. And so can you break it down

2:36

even easier and simpler? Give me example

2:38

of what your technology does. So

2:40

construction is the the second least digitized

2:42

field in the world. When you say construction,

2:45

nobody thinks of, okay, high-tech

2:47

4 and D. It's generally a low

2:49

tech field. And Believe

2:51

it or not, the way construction is managed today

2:53

is literally with ganttrucking

2:55

spreadsheets. We've worked on some

2:57

of the largest corporate headquarters

3:00

in the world for some of the most iconic companies

3:02

that most people use daily. I'm

3:04

talking, you know, one point four billion dollars.

3:06

Right? Six hundred million dollars. We've worked

3:08

on infrastructure projects. The

3:10

HS2 job in the UK, a hundred

3:12

seventy billion and all of this

3:14

is basically done by hand. Believe it or

3:16

not, when you talk to someone outside construction,

3:18

people assume that someone is optimizing

3:21

how this darn three hundred million dollars

3:23

job comes together. And the answer is, yeah,

3:25

the way it's done is someone sits in a construction

3:28

trailer, tries to juggle ten

3:30

thousand tasks activities in their head

3:32

and they go, okay, well, I think we'll

3:34

do this with three cranes and

3:37

twelve steel cruiser or whatever the answer

3:39

is. And it's a very manual tedious

3:41

process. And consequently, eighty

3:44

percent large construction projects are behind

3:46

schedule.

3:47

Okay. And so are we thinking, like, anything

3:49

with cranes? Basically, you're doing simulations in

3:51

that to make it Morkos I

3:53

yeah. That's something I wouldn't even think about, but

3:55

you kind of build up plan to make it faster

3:57

and cheaper for whenever they're setting

3:59

up the cranes to either build an interstate

4:01

or build a huge tower they're running

4:03

into simulations and your thing and you kind of help

4:05

them figure out the most efficient way to plan

4:07

it? Exactly. So there's basically

4:09

two ways to solve a problem. You either

4:11

solve them mathematically. So you figure

4:13

out the slab has to be sixteen

4:15

inches thick. Right? That's the optimal solution.

4:18

So you calculate that. And if the

4:20

problem is too complicated, which in our

4:22

case it is, when you're building a three hundred million

4:24

dollar project, you're burning through one point

4:26

six million dollars a day, and you have six

4:28

thousand people on-site, you can't

4:30

mathematically calculate what's the right

4:32

number of people or or what's the right

4:34

sequence of events. Scheduling

4:36

problems are notoriously difficult. They

4:38

tend to have solution spaces that are

4:40

trillion possibilities. The way to

4:42

solve these kind of problems is through simulation.

4:45

And the issue thus far in

4:47

construction has been that there's no

4:49

way to set up the simulation. That's

4:51

been the challenge. Like, there's no way to tell the

4:53

computer hey, I'm building a three

4:55

hundred million dollars hospital and

4:57

here's how I want you to simulate the

4:59

construction of it. And that's what we figured

5:01

out, at Alice. We figured out a way to do that scalably.

5:03

That's what Alice really is. It's effectively a

5:05

translator. It's a tool you

5:07

say, here's how you build a column. You need these

5:09

five tasks and these resources. Apply to

5:11

all the columns. Here's how you build a slab,

5:13

apply it to all the slabs, here's how you build the roof,

5:15

apply it to all the roof elements. What's kind

5:17

of really cool about the software is that as

5:19

a

5:19

result, you input twenty

5:22

five rules and the software generates

5:24

six thousand tasks, crunches them and

5:26

optimizes them for you. How did

5:28

you decide to come up with this Alice

5:30

technologies

5:31

here? Sometimes I say that the best

5:33

companies just happen, and that was definitely

5:35

kind of the case with Alice. I'm a construction

5:37

guy. 4 job I had when I was

5:39

seventeen. I was an assistant site

5:42

foreman on a construction project. First

5:44

job out of college, I went to Afghanistan.

5:46

Design built procured my own jobs from scratch

5:48

because there's really no infrastructure. So

5:50

you're the chief architect, chief structural

5:52

engineer, chief construction manager,

5:54

chief human officer, and all the above.

5:56

And so I started building a lot of stuff,

5:58

got given five projects, hundred

6:00

people, hundred fourteen people, when I was twenty

6:02

249, realized, like, hey, I should probably learn how

6:04

the pros do it because I'm I'm really kind of winging

6:07

it. So did my PhD at Stanford?

6:09

Did a what they call an industrial PhD?

6:11

So six month on six month off. So

6:13

go to school, take around the lab,

6:15

take it to the field, try

6:17

out these algorithms, and I kept trying

6:19

like, figure out how could you

6:21

manage construction better. Being in Silicon

6:23

Valley, everybody's using AI to

6:25

solve the problem. And so I

6:27

realized that, oh, it's it's a really complex

6:29

problem. I should probably use algorithms to solve

6:31

it. So I started tinkering around with

6:33

that and realized it surprisingly like

6:35

it hasn't been done. And so I spent six years

6:37

on the PhD building the prototype

6:40

while I did the conceptual research theoretical

6:42

research. Then it moved into prototyping.

6:45

Then we won this competition at Stanford.

6:47

The lawyers and corporate of the company. They gave

6:49

us something called deferred payment. Which means

6:51

like, oh, we'll incorporate a company and you'll pay us

6:53

later when you raise the money. And we've now

6:55

since raised, I think, fifty five million.

6:57

So that's kind of how it got started.

6:59

Well, that was a quick run through. I guess, yeah, we

7:01

can rewind and go more depth between

7:03

Afghanistan and a PhD because that seems like a

7:05

big jump of don't know if you can go with

7:07

college and you're like, hey, let me go back and do a

7:09

PhD because imagine you have to get your

7:11

masters So it did before you've been doing

7:13

that. Right? Yeah. Absolutely.

7:15

There's definitely very different skill

7:18

set, mindset, and

7:20

I guess philosophical

7:21

approach. Between building

7:24

things in Afghanistan and doing a PhD.

7:26

Right. I know they seem opposite 249 me,

7:28

opposite sides of the world and literally

7:30

249. Absolutely. But I think a couple

7:32

of things. Right? I don't know when's like a

7:34

good time to explain how the the story

7:37

starts, but I'm half check, half Lebanese.

7:39

So my mom's European, my dad's from the

7:41

Middle East, and so I quickly learned

7:44

that bringing very desperate

7:46

different worlds into

7:48

other worlds could be very useful.

7:51

And so your assessment of,

7:53

like, yeah, they're completely opposite end of the

7:55

spectrum. I completely agree, but I've

7:57

learned from an early age that the

7:59

best engineers are probably gonna be the ones

8:01

that have some artistic ability or

8:03

a gut sense. And the best musicians

8:05

are probably ones that have a knack for mathematics.

8:08

To me, it's surprising at how much

8:10

people are like, oh, no. This

8:12

is the way you should be. Or as I found

8:14

the opposite to be true, it's like when you show

8:16

up and you're different. Some people

8:18

might not like that, but a lot of times folks

8:20

are like, oh, that's an interesting approach.

8:22

You're an engineer that likes art

8:24

or whatever the the sort of combination is.

8:26

And so 4 me, it was a huge

8:29

change. I mean, I went from

8:31

having a driver, a bodyguard, a

8:33

cleaner, a house, managing

8:35

a hundred people where I was

8:38

basically responsible from a to z, right,

8:40

for for their safety, for their

8:42

well-being, to suddenly riding

8:44

around on a squeaky

8:45

bike. Can do it homework. It

8:47

sounds like you have quite a past.

8:49

I'm happy to jump right back into the

8:51

beginning kind of you growing up especially with

8:54

different types of parents. It sounds like it's

8:56

not like they were from the same country, but first I

8:58

did have a question. So can Alice

9:00

figure out how the pyramids were

9:02

built? Yeah.

9:04

I wish. Have you

9:07

looked into

9:07

this? Do you know anything about it?

9:09

You can set up the premise and Allison. You can

9:11

hit the simulate button and she'll assimilate it

9:13

for you. Right? Yeah. But does it take

9:16

alien

9:16

technologies into, you know, how they actually

9:18

built it or no? That was the

9:20

answer, but we've never publicly released it.

9:22

Oh. You know? But I'm I'm I'm glad we

9:24

got got around to it.

9:26

Yeah. I've watched tons of documentaries on it. Because

9:28

at first, I just figured people did it,

9:30

but they're saying you had to move a stone

9:32

every, I think, two minutes for twenty years

9:34

straight because they think it was built in twenty

9:36

years, which I don't see how it's possible. I don't

9:38

know if you ever looked into it, but they said even

9:40

with our technology today, we can still

9:42

not cut the precise I

9:44

guess, angles of these blocks into the pyramids. Do

9:46

you know about that? Oh, absolutely.

9:48

The precision of it is remarkable. And

9:50

if you look at the size

9:52

of it is also remarkable. Even another

9:54

thing is that if you look at the length,

9:57

it's exactly one

9:59

sixty three thousand's four

10:01

hundred and thirty ninth of the

10:03

circumference of the Earth, like exactly,

10:05

which is pretty remarkable they

10:07

actually have the circumference of the earth when they built

10:09

it. There's a lot of lot of things in it that are incredibly

10:12

precise. It's it's a remarkable piece

10:14

of engineering. Yeah. Especially when you take

10:16

into the alignment of the stars and what they used

10:18

with that too. So you're, like, not only

10:20

looking at our Earth, but you're taking

10:22

in to the universe of high gravity you're

10:24

building. You don't have any thoughts

10:26

on how it was

10:26

built? No. I wouldn't be able to talk

10:28

to. We'll talk to Alice later. Yeah. You

10:30

should ask Alice, but yeah. Know, I'm an

10:32

expert. I mean, I've built in 4

10:35

continents from crisis, you know, underwater

10:37

pipelines, three fifty million dollars

10:39

gas refineries, Europe, US,

10:41

like commercial, infrastructure,

10:44

industrial, like, I've I've done

10:46

a whole wide range of sort of modern day

10:48

construction. I got a pretty good idea of

10:50

how these projects come together.

10:52

Today, when you look at what they were doing back down,

10:54

it's kind of my boy. Good. It makes

10:56

me feel good that I'm not just, like, making that

10:58

up. So is it if it's mind blowing to you, then

11:00

I'm glad I'm not the only one. So Well, thank

11:02

you for giving us a general idea of

11:04

Alice, and I think he gave us a little bit of background. But

11:06

why don't we even start you said how your

11:08

parents met and where they're from, and then we

11:10

can kinda just take it from

11:11

there. Yeah. For me,

11:14

I think that the defining

11:16

experience maybe of my life was

11:18

this war that I went through in

11:20

my childhood. So my father

11:22

grew up extremely poor. He

11:24

he was a shoe shiner. When he was

11:26

fourteen on the streets of Beirut. He didn't

11:28

finish high school. he was twenty one decided

11:30

that he was gonna get an education long

11:33

story, he spent three days on a

11:35

train to the Czech Republic because the

11:37

communists were educating people for free.

11:39

And in most the world, you couldn't get educated if

11:41

your parents weren't rich. And so he learned

11:43

check of all things in

11:45

a year and then graduated eleven

11:47

years later page team at my mom, but

11:49

didn't like communism. Anybody that's

11:51

interested in communism, there's one place in the world where

11:53

you can still experience it and that's Cuba.

11:55

And I went there a few years ago and a lot of

11:57

the stories that my parents would tell me about suddenly

12:00

were very real. It's really

12:02

crazy when you realize

12:04

that we're all used to capitalism. It's

12:06

kinda like that joke I like to tell

12:08

it's two fish swimming in the water and an

12:10

old fish swims by them and says,

12:12

Good Morkos, how's the water? And

12:14

this fish little fish swim on and one of

12:16

them says, what is water? Right? And that's that's

12:19

capitalism. Right? We don't realize

12:21

how much it affects and in my

12:23

opinion improves our lives. Right? But my

12:25

parents escaped communism. My mom

12:27

refused to be a member of communist party really

12:29

was like, no, I disagree with the

12:31

system. I I think it's dumb that you

12:33

can't own anything. I think it's dumb

12:35

that it's not you're you're born equal, but

12:37

you're gonna stay equal. Like, no matter what you

12:39

do. Right? You're all gonna earn the same. You're all

12:41

gonna have the same

12:42

lives. Where was it communism?

12:45

Yeah. Where was it? Check a

12:47

public. Yeah. I didn't I didn't even know that at that

12:48

point in time. So, yeah, I have no clue. Okay. I

12:51

got your former Soviet Union. And then, like,

12:53

my dad would tell me stories that I

12:55

always kind of half believe them till I want the

12:57

Cuba. I went out and would tell me stuff

12:59

like there's a line of people. And so

13:01

you, you know, like, hey, what are you guys waiting

13:03

for? They'll show up. So you stand

13:05

in line and then a truck shows up with

13:07

shoes and they just start handing out shoes

13:09

wrong size, wrong people. And so

13:11

people start like yelling, you know, I got a

13:13

size eleven. Someone's like size

13:15

twelve, like, okay. So you throw your shoes with someone. And

13:17

there's always people that are kind of standing around the

13:19

wrong size shoe. Like, there's no

13:21

you walk in a store, you can't buy

13:24

something. There's like two types of cheese.

13:26

Right? That's it. There's a whole

13:28

story of my parents needing a baby

13:30

prim. On my dad because he was

13:32

not from the Czech Republic, so he had

13:34

access to commodities

13:36

and goods from outside the Czech Republic.

13:38

So he was like It took them three months of like,

13:40

wheeling and dealing to procure a

13:42

baby crown. So my parents

13:44

left, my my dad told my mom,

13:46

honey, let's go to where I'm from. I'm

13:48

from Beirut. It's the Paris of the Middle East. You're

13:50

gonna love this place. And they showed up

13:52

and then the war broke out three months later.

13:54

And so the first five years

13:56

of my life was very

13:58

intensive, civil embalming.

14:00

What was the war? When I got

14:02

to Beirut at seventeen again,

14:04

undergraduate, my bachelor's degree, That was first

14:06

question I asked. I walked up to someone who

14:08

was an older gentleman in his 4.

14:10

And I said, hey, what happened?

14:12

And the response was nobody knows.

14:14

I thought someone was so, I mean, this guy is evidently an

14:16

idiot. How can you not know what happened? You know, eleven

14:19

years of civil war. Then

14:21

through the course of me living there, I

14:23

asked several people would happen,

14:25

and the generalist of it was, like, nobody

14:27

really knows. As we're seeing in the in the

14:29

Russia, Ukraine conflict, like, there's so much

14:31

misinformation when it's about life and

14:33

death, people start the rules

14:35

change. Right? People switch sides.

14:37

All parties committed atrocities. Right?

14:39

I must learn the Christian, the Jew like, the

14:41

Israelis, the certain like, everybody in the

14:43

war starts to behave horrifically. Right?

14:45

And so over the course of eleven

14:48

years, pretty much every

14:50

possible pairing and grouping of

14:52

factions was the case at

14:54

some point and then they switched at some point

14:56

and everybody had bombed everyone and everybody

14:58

had shot everyone and of general mess.

15:00

And so a good portion of that

15:02

war was and I think it

15:04

was even harder before the

15:06

Internet and before This was widely

15:08

publicized, but there was a lot of civilian

15:10

shelling airplanes, artillery,

15:12

the civilian population was subjected

15:13

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would it was the Paris of the Middle East because it's

18:16

like, I'm thinking of today's terms, and then you're talking about stuff.

18:18

The Czech Republic's like, I had no idea that

18:20

it was like communism back in the day. But then

18:22

you think about it, just see

18:24

the country today, and I don't even forget about the USSR. And

18:27

then you're talking about Lebanon. I'm like, what war

18:29

is it? And you're you're saying, I guess, it was a civil

18:31

war for I don't

18:33

know. Give them twenty years or whatever, and they don't even

18:35

know why. So yeah. It's just interesting.

18:37

Just because something's the way it is today, maybe

18:39

twenty years ago is totally

18:40

different. It changed like, I mean, Austin,

18:42

that's the thing. The thing that you

18:44

call society and civilization,

18:46

it changes, like, I

18:48

mean, in

18:49

a snap. And

18:50

I've seen it. Yeah. And we we've all seen it recently. I mean,

18:52

with Ukraine and Russia, like you said, like, how quick did

18:54

everything switch over them? Oh, yeah.

18:57

Absolutely. And tiny things like

18:58

COVID. Right? I remember, like, going to

19:01

supermarket and people are like, oh, I'm

19:03

panicking. You know, buying toilet paper.

19:05

That's like, Yeah. Luckily,

19:07

I bought toilet paper early because I have

19:09

a lot of Filipinos who work on the podcast and

19:11

they are telling me there's a run on toilet paper.

19:13

So I went to my grocery store

19:16

And I got, like, one of the last twelve packs, I think.

19:18

That was, like, before they shut down anything. I

19:20

was, like, right when they started talking about COVID, I'm, like, why

19:22

would toilet paper be going

19:23

out? They're, like, don't know. If you were just buying them,

19:25

like, okay. Well, I'm gonna get a great start buying

19:28

something. Yeah. That's that's life, you

19:30

know. It change

19:30

like, I mean, it changes fast. Right?

19:33

It really does. And people don't realize it.

19:35

But like this thing, it's fragile.

19:37

We're so lucky. Right? You don't worry

19:39

about the bank shutting Right?

19:41

Like, you don't think about it. You don't think like, hey, I

19:43

could go to the bank tomorrow and it's kinda like out

19:46

of business. You know? You don't worry about

19:48

oh, crap. The airport's been bombed.

19:50

You're really stuck. Right. You're not going anywhere. Or the

19:53

hospital's not working. Or the pharmacy is

19:55

closed. Like, those are pretty serious

19:57

problems. Right? So Yeah.

19:59

I've definitely experienced it more than

20:01

once because I don't know. I wouldn't have done this when I

20:03

grew up.

20:03

Okay. Well, yeah. So what year did you move

20:05

back eleven 249. I'm just trying to put a 249 for everyone who

20:07

knows, like, kind of the aging year and get an

20:09

idea of their timeline

20:10

here. Yeah. So when I was six,

20:13

mom really put a foot down and was like, look,

20:15

I'm we're done. Like, this is

20:17

just insane. We're leaving. So we left. We

20:19

went to basically Dubai or

20:21

Russel Hemo, which is a small emirates in the UAE,

20:24

about two hours away from Dubai. And I

20:26

spent my summers in the Czech Republic. And then when I

20:28

was eleven, we moved to Dubai again,

20:30

spent my summers in Czech Republic. I

20:32

graduated high school at sixteen. I

20:34

skipped two grades. And then my

20:36

parents were like, look, you're too young, doing

20:38

additional year. High school had, like, the

20:40

thirteenth plus one year that

20:42

you could do. So I did that. And then the

20:44

seventeenth, I went to Baylor got my

20:46

undergraduate degree in five

20:48

years. That brought me to twenty two,

20:51

and that's when I made this

20:53

decision. And I went to

20:54

Afghanistan. Okay. And so that was two thousand three,

20:57

just so we know about the age. Too.

20:59

So where were you born? I was born

21:01

in the Czech Republic. Okay. And you were

21:03

there for five years, and then way back

21:05

I'm just trying to figure out how long you were on Lebanon

21:07

249. went back and forth, it sounds like,

21:09

yeah, you're moving a lot. I'm just trying

21:11

to figure that out a little bit. Yeah. So born in

21:13

the Czech Republic, was three months

21:15

old, and then my parents moved to

21:18

Beirut. And about three months

21:20

later, the war broke out. So I

21:22

guess, so six months when the war broke

21:24

out, and then was five and a half

21:26

years of age, we moved out. So

21:28

I spent the first five years in

21:30

this very intense war, which I've

21:32

kind of unraveled in the last couple of years

21:34

of my life. I'm like, oh, it really had

21:36

a lot of impact in my life. I didn't

21:38

realize it, but it affected the

21:40

entrepreneurial journey, and it affected the research,

21:42

and it affected a lot of things, I

21:44

guess, without me fully realizing it at the

21:46

time. And so six years of

21:48

age move to Dubai, seventeen

21:50

go back to Beirut. At this point,

21:52

it's like, great. It's the Mediterranean. Everything's

21:55

quiet. Life's great. There's bars,

21:57

cafes, restaurants, life's jamming.

21:59

So, again, my undergraduate degree

22:01

and then I make some interesting choices. I

22:04

kind of decide that that I'm not

22:06

gonna join. My my dad had a pretty successful

22:08

group of companies in Dubai at the

22:10

time I decided that instead I was gonna go to

22:12

Afghanistan in all places. Okay.

22:13

Well, yeah, that makes sense. And just so everyone's on the

22:15

same page, because I'm looking at a map. It's so

22:17

easy for 4. Beirut's a capital of

22:20

Lebanon. Right? Or is that Yeah. So so

22:22

whenever it say beirut's that that's

22:24

Lebanon one of the the capital. So just, again, to

22:26

make it easy for everyone who's not looking at

22:28

a map, but just listening. And so yeah. So you

22:30

go back there, you do college, and then you get

22:32

out and you say, I'm gonna go to Afghanistan

22:34

and help engineers some roads. Yeah.

22:36

I was twenty two. I had this

22:38

realization that I was going to graduate. And

22:40

I was like, oh my god. I could do

22:42

anything I want. I why that was

22:44

so powerful for 4, but I thought of

22:47

myself, if you're going to go do

22:49

something because I had a pretty good

22:51

life. Had a lot of friends. I spent a lot of time sitting on the beach

22:53

drinking beer. Life was good. So I was like,

22:55

okay. Well, if you're gonna go do something, it's

22:57

gotta be a master Gotta be

22:59

something, like, really cool, like, really incredible.

23:02

What would that be? And so I sat on

23:04

a beach for, like, eight months and thought

23:07

about it. I mean, I spent a lot of time every day

23:09

thinking about what I wanna do in my

23:11

life. If I look back ten

23:13

years from now, what set of

23:15

events would I think Man,

23:17

that was worth it. Like, that was pretty freaking cool.

23:19

Yeah. That's awesome. That was the

23:21

thinking. And so when I came up

23:23

with this, I I go to Iraoka, I'm

23:26

gonna stand For a year, I'll

23:28

go to the US, get into like a top

23:30

ten school, finish my master's degree

23:32

in nine months, try to do it at

23:34

top of the class, and then get into, like, Stanford Harbor MIT

23:36

from a PhD. That was the idea.

23:38

And so that's exactly kinda what I

23:40

ended up

23:40

doing. Well, was it easy to find a

23:43

job in again, you to Afghanistan

23:45

first? Mhmm. Okay. So, yeah, tell us that

23:47

transition because, obviously, that's a huge

23:49

transition from, you said, drinking beer on a beach

23:51

to go in there.

23:53

Yeah. You have a knack for noticing

23:55

it. I think one of the hardest things to

23:57

do, and I think actually maybe the hardest

23:59

thing to do is to walk away

24:01

from yourself. Whoever you

24:03

are, it's defined by

24:05

a lot of subconscious

24:08

underpinnings. Whether you're a

24:10

doctor, a nurse, an

24:12

entrepreneur, a young college student.

24:14

A metal had a skateboarder like

24:16

we have identities that we identify with, and

24:18

walking away from those identities is

24:21

one of the most painful things you can

24:23

do, and people don't do it. For

24:25

that reason. And so you were correct. I

24:27

went from really parting a

24:29

lot in Beyruk and and having a good

24:31

time to suddenly managing

24:34

a hundred people in a war zone. And

24:36

you are correct. The adjustment

24:38

period was intense and

24:40

I would say urgent. So

24:42

yeah, but I guess that was kind of it. Like, III

24:45

sat down and I was like, hey, I've got a

24:47

comfortable life. This is it. I've kind of

24:49

carved out. There's nowhere else to

24:51

grow. And so I jumped into this

24:53

war zone experience. Right? And

24:55

it took me eight months to think

24:57

about it. I thought for eight 4, is this really what

24:59

you wanna do? And interestingly enough, there

25:01

was one main reason why you shouldn't

25:03

go to the war zone. Right. Which

25:05

is you could get very hurt or killed. But

25:07

when I sort of thought about it, everything else

25:09

was like, man, this seemed like it's gonna be a good

25:11

idea. I'm gonna about myself. I'm

25:13

gonna learn about life and death. I'm gonna

25:15

see history in the making. I'm

25:18

gonna grow

25:18

up. I'm gonna become a better person,

25:20

a better father. There's all these positive

25:23

reasons, so so I went for 4. That makes

25:25

sense. And then how long were you

25:27

there? Thirteen months? Well, when you're there,

25:29

are you staying in bunkers, tell us what

25:31

country you're with, like, and where you're staying

25:33

with life like

25:33

them. I was not with the army, so I was

25:36

a civilian. But I

25:38

didn't have, like, army corps of engineers or

25:40

something like that. No. We were private

25:42

contractors, man. And the

25:44

official slogan of the company, it was horror

25:46

construction of

25:47

Afghanistan, Take it easy. We'll build it

25:49

again. Take it easy. It's kinda weird. Maybe

25:51

I missed this up then, but maybe it should've been

25:53

build back better, but I don't want to like that.

25:56

Yeah. It would have. They don't really fucked it up.

25:59

Exactly right. The thing about it is, like, you

26:01

you've gotta have a sense of humor. Right? And

26:03

we did. You're out there. You're living

26:05

in town amongst the locals. You

26:07

don't have to be inside a base. You don't in

26:09

like the UN, you don't have a curfew. You don't have to be

26:11

home at ten PM. The bars

26:13

are insane. Let me tell you about the bars in

26:15

our ballast, though. What city were you in?

26:17

Double, mainly. But I worked, you know, I had

26:19

projects in massarshi if Harat,

26:21

Kondouslikat, projects all over

26:23

the place. So, you know, I would fly

26:25

there, little airplanes, you

26:27

know, some like half hack kind of

26:29

semi crazy pilot who's flying between

26:31

the mountains. Right? Landing on

26:33

some, like, like, I remember landing some guys

26:36

like, beep beep, you know, four

26:38

letter word there's a donkey in the runway. Like, oh

26:40

my god, you gotta be kidding me. Yeah. It

26:42

was it was crazy. We got to

26:44

rebuild the country. Right? Which someone who's

26:46

experienced the war zone being part of the

26:48

reconstruction, not the

26:50

destruction was I think very important to me.

26:52

Right? I I'm very proud of

26:54

that. We were part of what pushed back

26:56

the Taliban, and what I

26:58

really learned was just a a

27:01

very really evil in many

27:03

ways, regime that didn't believe

27:05

in human rights, woman's rights,

27:07

empath you know, like, there's just a lot of

27:09

things that that were were misaligned between

27:11

mean, the way the rest of the world sees reality and the

27:14

way they do. I'm happy I got to be

27:16

part of pushing those lunatic back.

27:18

Building a military base to secure

27:20

security or building the first windows

27:22

doors factory in the country or

27:24

radio towers or whatever it was that I was working

27:26

on. We had projects with NATO. We had

27:28

projects with private you know, I recurrent RPG

27:30

attacks on the runway. I built a, you

27:32

know, a military base for the British. 4 was

27:34

really cool. Like, I got to travel back

27:36

for five hundred years. Incredible country,

27:38

incredible people. Super proud,

27:41

very strong world. I

27:43

saw people who were in situations

27:45

that were horrific. Just

27:47

absolutely horrific somebody that had lost

27:49

both legs and a hat. And they they would

27:51

smile and they would joke with you.

27:53

The power of the human spirit to

27:55

overcome adversity that I saw there was

27:57

was just humbling. And I

27:59

think shaped really the rest of my life in

28:01

a lot of ways. It was a very different

28:03

person coming

28:04

back. Sounds like it. I think you gave

28:06

us a good summary, but I don't know if there's one

28:08

or two stories that stick out from

28:10

there in those, I guess, eighteen months

28:12

that

28:12

you're there. Yeah. That is, like, I mean, so

28:15

many. Right? Let's get a good ball of

28:17

Scotch and, you know, I mean, the bar is

28:19

right. Like, you you walk into a

28:21

bar. people that are armed to

28:23

the teeth. And, like, you have no idea who they

28:25

are. That guy looks subgotti. That guy looks

28:27

Western. That guy looks really highly trained.

28:29

He's not drinking. That guy is drunk

28:31

as hell. These folks are smoking opium.

28:34

Those guys are smoking hashish. There's

28:36

sex workers. There's I'll

28:38

look at all. There's drugs weapons. Right? And I'm

28:41

twenty two. I would sit in the

28:43

corner, mine my own business and

28:45

just watch. And some guy

28:47

gets drunk and empties a a machine and

28:49

magazines to the door, you know.

28:51

People get into the fight. I

28:53

would really try to not get too

28:55

involved and just sit there and

28:57

sip on a Heineken or two and go

28:59

home. But crazy parties, right? Like, everybody's

29:01

making a lot of money for the risk.

29:03

You don't know if you're gonna be here tomorrow, and there's a

29:05

lot of stress, parties that have

29:08

snipers on the roof. I remember taking a

29:10

girl on that I met there an American

29:12

girl and we arrived at the restaurant and they had a

29:14

bomb scare. You don't mind,

29:16

right? Ruth, I think was her name. She's like,

29:18

no. So we walk in there's

29:20

a complete empty. Right? And I said, you see, honey,

29:22

I reserve the whole place for us. Like, I walk

29:24

in the office one day and there's no

29:26

power. Turn on the generator. We can't. Why

29:28

not? The diesels water in it. It broke

29:30

the generator. Go buy more

29:32

diesel. There is no diesel. So I'm like, are you telling me in

29:34

the whole country? There's no diesel and the guy looks at

29:36

me like, are you an idiot? Like, no. Of

29:38

course, there's no diesel in the country. So by

29:40

that evening, the decision is we're gonna build 249 own

29:42

diesel station. I'm designing a diesel

29:45

next I had it to my foreman. He's like, what's this? I'm like,

29:47

we're building a diesel station. Crazy

29:49

shit. You're earning so much more

29:51

than the local population and they

29:53

rely on you. would bring their kids

29:55

who are sick. I'm like, I'm

29:57

not a doctor, but I can find one, you

29:59

know. Suddenly three hours a year a

30:01

day is tracking down

30:03

the only American eye doctor and

30:05

you can look it up. There's I think his name was

30:07

Richardson. Then you walk in there and have

30:09

this guy in a bottle of twelve

30:11

year old Shavas Regal or

30:13

whatever it was, and he helps

30:15

you take a look at a kid

30:17

who's who's injured his eye. You pump in

30:19

gas into the car and a helicopter

30:21

lands next to you. And this dude

30:23

hops out and starts pumping fuel

30:25

from the fuel thing next

30:27

door. Right? You're on a runway and

30:29

an f sixteen takes off. Right? You're in a restaurant that

30:31

blows up. Right? You're driving down the

30:33

road. A car, two hundred feet from you

30:35

blows up. You take me two

30:37

and a half years start to kinda recover

30:39

or

30:39

equalize. No. I mean, it sounds

30:42

like it sounds like almost like every day, every

30:44

other day, whatever it might be. It's like you

30:46

have enough stories in a

30:48

few days live in there that some

30:50

people might have in a lifetime, you know, especially

30:52

people who live in America and have it easy. Like

30:54

we're talking about in the beginning, how easy life

30:56

is here. No communism or anything.

30:58

And you're just seeing all these different types of

31:00

stories and ethnicities and come

31:02

together in a wild

31:03

spot. Yeah. I tried to

31:05

to help as many people as I could, but some

31:07

point of your eyes, like, look, I I can't help seventeen

31:09

million people. The situation a lot of

31:11

these folks are in, there's is horrendous. You

31:14

come back to what we call

31:16

civilization. Your perception changes. Right? I

31:18

remember the three years after. It was just very

31:20

difficult for me to perceive what

31:22

we call our first world problems is

31:24

problems. And it's faded over

31:26

time. I've now become more accustomed to, you

31:28

know, the the problems that we have, but no one's

31:30

trying to kill

31:31

you. And so from there, you've

31:33

applied 249 try to get into Stanford

31:35

or how did you go over that route and

31:37

what was the next

31:38

destination? What I

31:38

told myself is three strikes for one

31:41

year. So I had my three strikes, three

31:43

closed calls. Oh, of death?

31:44

Yeah. Oh, tells the

31:47

three deaths and then strike and then

31:49

let's move on. I was on a restaurant

31:51

and the restaurant blew up and

31:53

it burned thirteen people and killed

31:56

one. I personally think that there was a good chance that it

31:58

was the gas cylinder in the kitchen, but the

32:00

reason we survived was that restaurant

32:02

was glass. Two of

32:04

the walls were glass, so that force went

32:06

out and the building didn't collapse.

32:08

Life flashed before my eyes. That's an

32:10

interesting experience. So, that was one.

32:12

Like I said, you know, I I got a phone

32:14

call that the boss wanted to see me, so

32:16

I I stopped the car and hundred

32:18

meters down the road. They blew up

32:20

three soldiers. British guys

32:22

incident with the gun

32:24

exchange at night and in Kabul, who was I

32:26

think also pretty done in close

32:28

calls. So yeah, you you've

32:30

gotta make some decisions, and I

32:32

thought to myself three

32:34

strikes or one year. And my

32:36

three strikes. I think it was, you know, ten months

32:38

in, and so I resigned. I was like, you know

32:40

what? I'm good. I think I I need to

32:42

get that later. And the other thing that I think started

32:45

happening is a friend of mine said war is a slow trickle out of

32:47

adrenaline. And it's interesting. It's not

32:49

those incidents, those close calls that I

32:51

think get you. It's the every

32:53

day where you're like, okay, could this be it? You

32:55

know, is is that parked car maybe? Like,

32:57

that's only the suitcase. Is that

32:59

guy safety on his machine gun

33:02

off? All day every day, your brains just starts

33:04

to get really hardwired into

33:06

assessing and identifying risk, and you

33:08

start to get this thing called hyper vigilance.

33:11

It sounds cool because your brain

33:14

over analyzes everything through this filter

33:16

of, like, can it kill me? But the unfortunate

33:18

part is you can't turn it off. And you start to sleep six

33:20

hours a day or five and a half hours a day.

33:22

Right? And, yeah, it really works on

33:24

your side, call you. So it was time to

33:26

get 249. I resigned and got the hell

33:28

out of dog. And and I applied

33:30

to a number of places I went to

33:32

USC, kind of interesting thing like internet

33:34

cafes and cobble. Right? It's like you put

33:36

a pistol in your back pocket and you're sitting

33:38

there and then the guy's got a generator and

33:40

it's not working USA was like, you gotta send

33:42

us photocopies of, like, XYZ

33:45

Like, guys, we don't have electricity. It's gonna

33:47

be a bit of a challenge. Yeah. I got

33:50

the USC Gothic's Prince South Central? Maybe the big

33:52

summary of Gatistan was. If I was to

33:54

summarize that, I learned two things. One, I really

33:56

don't want to die 249 two,

33:58

I'm going to. And when

34:00

you put those together, like, I think the really big upshot

34:02

was I suddenly realized,

34:04

hey, money, you've got forty 4.

34:07

So what the bleep are you gonna with it? That was the big change.

34:09

Because I went from like sitting on a beach,

34:11

drinking beer, messing with my friends

34:13

to suddenly like Whoa,

34:16

got this really, really valuable

34:18

thing. You only get one, and what are

34:20

you gonna do with it? What are you gonna put in it? What

34:22

are you gonna invest it into? What are you gonna build

34:24

with it? That was the big

34:26

change. I went to USC, got my

34:28

math, got it in nine months, graduated

34:30

top of class.

34:32

Right? Suddenly From a bachelor's, I was kind of scraping through kind of

34:34

c plus b minus b

34:35

student. Right? Suddenly, I had one

34:38

a minus. Right? And it was easy. The

34:40

motivation was

34:42

there. And then USC is a sudden account for you because anybody

34:44

doesn't know. So you're there. And then

34:46

do you right from there, after you

34:48

get out? You said about nine months,

34:51

do you doing more What what do you get from there?

34:53

So the plan was to go do this p

34:56

So I applied to Stanford.

34:58

I got lucky that I got accepted,

35:00

and then, you know, started my my PG program. And and it's the thing about

35:02

Stanford that I was really like, was

35:04

it was like, it's the institution of yes.

35:07

249 know? So I went to my adviser.

35:09

I said, hey, I wanna spend six months a year working. Like,

35:11

I don't wanna be in school for twelve months a year. And he

35:13

was like, okay. I

35:15

said, I wanna finish in, like, three years. It's, like, yeah, you and

35:18

everyone else. Cool. And I said, and I wanna

35:20

get my PhD, but I'm more of a

35:22

businessman than an academic. And he's,

35:24

like, okay. I was like,

35:26

really? No. Have a good

35:28

day. So yeah. I started my

35:30

PhD, and then I kinda did this thing where

35:32

I was working. Like, I basically was working for six months a

35:34

year, and I used that to fund the program. So I

35:36

was working for this company in Amsterdam. So I

35:38

was doing

35:40

this at first six month rotation and three month rotation, but I would fly to Amsterdam,

35:42

be there for three months, and then

35:44

go back to Stamford, and then be

35:47

in the lab, and thinking around with what I had learned in the field

35:49

in Amsterdam and I did that for almost four

35:52

years basically. But I think that's one reason

35:54

why the research was so

35:56

practical because

35:57

Every three months, I was back in the field trying to

35:59

see if this thing was like actually worth

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com. And

37:40

so right when you started your PhD program,

37:42

is that when you thought about Alice or

37:44

When did that come into

37:45

play? I started the PSD and I thought to myself like, all I wanna do

37:47

and I think this is what I learned

37:49

with the PSD. All I wanna do

37:51

is I wanna get this title, I wanna get this

37:54

degree, then I'll go build a company and work for no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

37:56

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I'll start doing the real

37:58

stuff. But the price of attaining this PhD

38:00

was so high that I reached

38:02

a point where I wanted a clip.

38:05

The reason I'm sort explaining that is that from a

38:08

deeper motivational perspective,

38:10

you get these emails once every so

38:12

often 249 these institutions. I learned a

38:15

lot, but I just said, I'm, my honest. It's like, yeah, you ran out of fuel. And so

38:17

I had drafted the emails. I wrote one to my

38:19

dad, one to my adviser, and and I was

38:21

like, okay, I'm done. And been

38:24

here for three years. No need to panic. Right? You

38:26

don't need to quit tomorrow. Then give it a couple

38:28

of weeks ago. Think, well, think about what you need

38:31

wanna do next, and as I thought about it, I certainly have this

38:33

realization where I was like, you know

38:35

what? I think I kinda like it. I think

38:37

I kinda like doing what I'm

38:39

doing. And the difference was that before I was like, I'm

38:41

doing this so that I complete. I'm doing this

38:43

so that I get the degree. I'm doing this so that

38:45

I get the title. There's

38:47

some end goal that was gonna make this

38:50

worth it. And then when I sat down, I

38:52

suddenly went to this other reality

38:54

where 4 was

38:56

like, no. And I kind of came up with a sentence which is like the only reason we're something

38:58

is it in itself. And it was

39:00

literally the most freeing thing in

39:03

the world. That alone was made that six years

39:05

of the PhD worth it. What did

39:06

you say to yourself? 249 didn't hear it say

39:09

it again. The only reason we're worth doing

39:11

something is it in itself. I

39:13

go to work because I'm I'm gonna make

39:16

VP in two years. And then you make

39:18

VP and it's like, well, I'm earning

39:20

whatever it is, one hundred and forty

39:22

thousand a year. But Now I'm gonna earn

39:24

one hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty or one hundred and

39:26

eighty. There's always that carrot at the end

39:28

of the road. It's like,

39:30

oh, I'm I'm doing this phd because

39:32

in three more years I'll get it and I'll

39:34

have this title. No.

39:36

I'm doing this because my I like it. My

39:38

day to day is cool. I I get to interact

39:40

with really smart people. And it

39:42

suddenly went from like, oh my god. I'm stressed. I

39:44

gotta finish. I need to get to the goal state

39:46

to I like my current

39:48

day to day. That was one of the

39:51

most powerful and freeing things in the world. The

39:53

only reason we're doing something is it in

39:55

itself because then you're you're

39:57

not thinking like, hey, I gotta go finish this. I

39:59

gotta get this end state. Yeah. So what? It's

40:01

gonna take seven more years. I'm in. Hit

40:03

me. Bring it on. Guess I didn't enjoy it. I was

40:05

having fun. I really liked it. It was working eighteen hours, twenty hours

40:07

a day, but I I like to work. And so that's

40:09

a question like like how is I

40:12

was born I was just

40:14

focused on pushing the edge, pushing the

40:16

boundary. That's kind of the one thing I didn't talk

40:18

about. I was exploring myself. The

40:20

thing I was trying to answer in Afghanistan

40:22

was like, how they become a better person, what is the value of human

40:24

life? Suddenly now, in the unit of

40:26

PhD, it was like, what would

40:28

it look

40:30

like? If I put every last Iota of myself

40:32

into something. So I was like, okay, well,

40:34

this is kind of a, you know, let's go try.

40:38

The way the whole thing started was I was in a Amsterdam

40:40

revolving cruise ship terminal for Amsterdam, a

40:42

chemical 4. And the guy's yelling that he

40:44

can't work any faster. He can't work any faster.

40:47

Dutch people don't tend to yell. I'm sitting at the table and yelling

40:49

at each other. So I I was like, you know what? I need a little

40:51

bit of a breather. This is a bit tense. So I

40:53

got off, looked outside the window,

40:55

And this guy is going, can't work any faster. I can't work any

40:58

faster. The structural steel is six weeks

41:00

late. It's fifty thousand euros

41:02

per day. So they've just burned through the profit margin and losing money job

41:04

now. And I'm looking outside and there's a

41:06

hundred thousand square foot in empty space and

41:08

six people standing in it. That's

41:11

when it hit me because the experience in

41:14

Afghanistan even though I was twenty,

41:16

you were live at this point. I've

41:18

been on twenty projects,

41:20

right, twenty certain projects, and I realize

41:22

every single project that I've ever

41:24

seen is empty, literally. Drive down

41:26

the street, on the highway, look at a construction project. Is

41:29

it ever like teeming with

41:31

workers? No. There's lots of empty space.

41:33

There might be like some pockets of

41:36

work Right? It might be a crane dropping something into, like, zone b

41:38

on the third floor, but the other ten floors

41:40

are empty. There's no one there. So it's

41:42

like, oh, construction sites are empty.

41:45

Why don't I measure each four

41:47

columns of the zone? And we took

41:49

photos every twenty minutes. We did it in the

41:51

Netherlands twice, we did it in the US. On

41:53

the Bayou economy building at Stanford?

41:55

And would you like hazard a guess

41:57

at what percentage of construction

42:00

site space is actually used for

42:02

construction on

42:02

average? Yeah. Well, I never thought about it.

42:05

Honestly, I've now I'm picturing in

42:07

my head, especially, like, roadwork and stuff.

42:09

I mean, before, maybe I would guess, like,

42:12

twenty or twenty five, but I'm gonna

42:14

guess it's probably four

42:15

percent. Yeah. Three. Three percent was a

42:18

number. Right? So it's like,

42:20

oh, wow. And asset utilization of three percent is

42:21

ridiculous. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It it is so

42:24

ridiculous. It's it's hard to like you

42:26

said, whenever whenever always

42:28

highway work where I'm at on the interstate and

42:30

stuff, dude. It's just tens of miles of

42:32

nothing. And it's just, like, you said,

42:34

like, maybe ten cars And maybe

42:36

five of those ten cars people are eating lunch and just chilling.

42:39

Yeah. Exactly.

42:39

So then I went back to the apartment. I was

42:42

like, 249, the number's three percent.

42:44

Everybody's like, what the heck? I'm like,

42:46

yeah, it's three percent. And so it's like,

42:48

okay. Well, if it's three percent, could we

42:50

increase it? And I was like, okay. So I

42:52

started thinking, okay. Well, if you increase space

42:54

usage, you're putting more people on the

42:56

project. But the question then became, where do you put

42:58

them? I could put them in zone

43:00

A or zone B or zone C. And

43:02

so I started realizing there's like a lot

43:04

of op and that's when I was like, okay, I need an algorithm. So we

43:06

started fucks around with these algorithms, and the

43:08

first version of Alice

43:10

was literally Think of a white

43:12

screen with squares that

43:14

would pop up on it in various

43:16

locations. And those squares were like a

43:18

top view of second project than where the

43:20

work was occurring. The graphics weren't great,

43:22

but my adviser was like, hey, go validate

43:25

it with a project manager. I was like,

43:27

John, like, the guys in Amsterdam, and the answer to give him

43:29

was, I don't care if he's on the moon.

43:31

He'll validate it with the person that actually built the

43:33

job. I don't want you to give me some

43:35

stupid algorithm that you think works. So

43:37

I called them up. I said, do you guys want a free

43:39

week consulting? Sure. They paid for my ticket, flew down there

43:42

249 met this guy. He looked at the video

43:44

and was like, yeah, that's buildable. That's

43:46

when I hit. That's like holy cow. I have an

43:48

algorithm that knows how to build the

43:51

graphics suck, but it's a computer and

43:53

it knows how to build a

43:55

construction project. So get back and kill them flying across

43:57

the pond, sitting on the Heineken and I

43:59

was like, holy cow, this thing knows how

44:01

to build. So gotten back to the

44:03

university, realized like, hey, we need to add,

44:05

like, labor to it, cruise, and so on and so

44:07

forth. Then we enter this competition. We want

44:10

it. The investors call us. They

44:12

invested some cash and so on and so

44:14

forth 4 Next thing you know, you've got this and

44:16

we've cracked the problem that no one's cracked before.

44:18

So what percentage

44:19

could you get it up to from the

44:22

standard, like,

44:24

three percent? I'm gonna guess the max that again, it depends on the

44:26

type of project. Right? Right? If we're doing outside

44:28

of interstate and everything like that, but, I

44:30

mean, maybe max would

44:31

be, like, forty or

44:34

fifty percent, I guess? Fifty

44:36

five sixty were the numbers we're coming

44:38

up with.

44:39

Yeah. I feel very good about these guesses that I'm

44:41

doing. You have guessed

44:41

it better. The ninety eight percent

44:44

of the construction people have asked this question

44:46

nice. So

44:48

yeah. That's up

44:49

too. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Because I'm pretty handy, then I'll try

44:51

to figure out, like, I'm just sticking in the house. I'm like, well,

44:53

you can't have the electrical and the drywall and all

44:56

this, all it done at the same time. There still are stages, but there are certain

44:58

stages that you could finish and and they can move

45:00

into that zone. Like you said, once you start

45:02

to say in zones, I'm like,

45:05

Okay. That I could could see how that

45:07

could make sense. Because, obviously, there's no way you could

45:09

ever get to a hundred percent. You're still building it.

45:11

And something has a

45:13

dry, concrete, whatever. You know, we're paying Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You

45:15

you're waiting for

45:15

the cycle times or you're waiting for, you know, -- Right. --

45:18

area thing is that all over here? Yeah.

45:20

Exactly. Yeah.

45:21

That's what I'm saying. But then I think

45:23

that the other part of the puzzle is that it's funny because there is someone else

45:25

in the apartment who's working and something

45:27

similar. But the difference

45:30

was that and that person was two years ahead of me. So suddenly

45:32

come, like, this guy's always two years ahead of

45:34

me. Like, I don't know if I should just

45:35

clip. Oh, he's working on something that just like

45:38

Alice, you're

45:40

saying? Very similar. Yeah. Okay.

45:41

Yeah. Yeah. This this is something we all run into as

45:43

entrepreneurs. Yeah. But the thing I realized was was

45:45

two things. One,

45:48

that person wanna

45:50

the degree. So the the minute he had enough

45:52

to write up a PhD, he wrote it up and

45:54

got out of Dutch. With me, I was like,

45:57

You know what? I'm actually curious. Like, this is

45:59

kinda cool. Can you actually get this darn thing

46:01

that

46:01

works? Like, will it actually solve

46:04

calendars? Will it

46:06

solve cranes? Like, the question you're asking, which is what is a theoretical

46:08

max? Is not a question that that person

46:09

asked? You see the

46:12

difference. Right? Because that person's like,

46:14

oh, I as long as I can write this thing up

46:16

and they'll stamp it, then I'm out of here.

46:18

Then it's funny that that person

46:20

moved on onto a construction company and never used an

46:22

algorithm to solve any problem

46:24

ever as far as we can

46:25

tell. Whereas with me, adviser

46:27

was like, okay, you can write it

46:28

up. And I was like, hey, man, get out of my

46:31

way. It's just getting interesting. And then I

46:33

unlock this thing called the operational

46:35

efficiency frontier, which is automatically

46:37

derived creative efficiency. It's basically a way that you can calculate

46:39

limited space time systems. It was kinda cool. But

46:41

it was literally like one

46:44

step further. 249

46:46

keep going for a little bit. But that's, I

46:48

think, the kind of thing about it. I was, like, this

46:50

is interesting. I like

46:51

it. I wanna see what's on

46:53

the other side. Yeah. Because I'm trying to think even the first stage.

46:55

Maybe it's just a one story office building or

46:58

something, then your second stage is trying

47:00

to figure 249, like, a

47:02

multi low or I'm guessing. I don't know. Can you just easily kinda say the

47:04

stages of the beginning thing?

47:06

Because to give us some ideas of the projects, because,

47:08

yeah, it's it's going more and more in my head of,

47:10

like, how this could be used

47:12

on different things. The way

47:14

you

47:14

wanna think about it is that I got to experience

47:16

something that was not unique,

47:18

but really really rare. Because

47:21

I got to do conceptual

47:24

research. So conceptual research is

47:26

like, well, okay. So you wanna increase

47:28

space usage. So what are the pieces

47:30

of the puzzle? Well, labor, equipment

47:32

materials, sequencing, production

47:34

rates, durations. You're like, okay.

47:36

Well, labor? Do you

47:39

think about that as as crews or do you think about as an individual labor?

47:41

And is the production rate an attribute of

47:43

the crew or is an attribute

47:45

of the task?

47:48

Installed concrete. Is that the concrete crew has a production rate or

47:50

install concrete, the task is a production rate.

47:52

Right? So originally, you're just sort

47:55

of thinking like, conceptually, what are the pieces of the

47:58

puzzle? Anyone that's listening, the thing that

48:00

really surprised me is that

48:02

somehow you think

48:04

like, oh, these conceptual models have all been worked

48:06

out. This idea of like, oh, it's all been worked

48:08

out. Once I finished the

48:10

solution, I

48:12

was like, this is common nuts. You've got to be kidding me. It isn't worked

48:14

out. And I went through this process where I was

48:16

like, is it possible that there's

48:18

these other relatively obvious

48:20

ideas that haven't been figured out, and

48:22

it turns out that the answer is like yes.

48:24

I guess the thing that I learned was

48:27

don't think it's figured out. Like,

48:29

trust me. It's kinda mind blowing. How

48:31

much of it hasn't been figured out?

48:33

You think, oh, like, construction, it's tentral

48:35

in a year. Right? Like, they must have figured it

48:37

out. Right? Or insurance or health,

48:39

whatever it is. Right?

48:41

So conceptual research, moves into theoretical research. And now that you've

48:43

got the pieces of the puzzle, you gotta figure

48:46

how they move and interact together.

48:48

Steve jobs, right? He's got that famous thing where he

48:50

says, like, you've realized

48:52

that the world's built by people that are

48:54

smarter than you. When you look at

48:56

human performance,

48:58

the smartest person is is

49:00

what? Fifty percent smarter than, like,

49:02

the average person? The fastest

49:04

runner is twice as fat like, there's

49:06

not that much of a

49:08

variance. Right? The other thing you realize is large in this, like, what is it?

49:10

There's no one in the world that knows how to build a

49:12

mouse. There isn't. There's not a single person in the

49:14

world knows how to build a mouse. There's no one that knows

49:16

how to extract the

49:18

crude oil, filter it into

49:20

plastics, build the plastics for each piece

49:22

of the the mat. Like and that's what you've realized.

49:24

Right? Like, there's a little piece of the puzzle that have been solved

49:26

and kind of a cobble

49:27

together? Oh, you're talking about like a mouse for a computer versus I was thinking

49:29

4 like a rat. Oh, no. No. A mouse

49:31

for a computer. Right? 4. A

49:33

famous example. I remember it's like there's not a single

49:36

person in the world that knows

49:38

how to build a computer

49:39

mouse. Oh, yeah. Well, they said Milton Friedman,

49:41

I think this was big thing about

49:43

even in a pencil. Right? Old standard pencil. How many

49:45

different components are from different countries and,

49:47

like, at least a

49:50

hundred different things come together to make that product. And then when you

49:52

think of an

49:52

industry, like, think about it. It's like no one

49:54

knows how to build a pencil or a

49:56

mouse, but now the pencil and

50:00

drag with, you know, the supply chain and the rubbers and the

50:02

and the racers and the rulers. Everything's kind

50:04

of a mess. That that really is the the state

50:06

of things. And when I came up with this idea,

50:08

I I was like, Is it

50:11

because once you figure Alice out, you're like, oh, how is

50:13

it possible that a hundred million people

50:15

in the world that work in construction

50:17

haven't figured 249

50:19

this out? Because in hindsight, you're like, it's

50:22

not that complicated, I guess. I mean, it

50:24

took me six years.

50:25

Now, I've been working

50:27

on for thirteen. Which is also kind of

50:29

interesting because you realize that huge difference between known and unknown.

50:32

So if you're working on unknown

50:34

stuff like 249 hour produces

50:36

a widget, two hours in two widgets.

50:38

Unknown is like one hour

50:40

or two hours, three hours produces No

50:43

widgets. Right? Right. Yeah. Twenty hours.

50:45

Like, thousands of hours. And then sometimes you

50:47

go backwards too. Einstein said if we knew

50:49

what we were doing, we wouldn't

50:51

call it research. And the example that by the way that

50:53

I found was palaeontology. So

50:56

you can look this up. So there's some

50:59

lady palaeontology that's trying to clean

51:01

a fossil below the drill. And at one

51:04

point, she goes like

51:06

sniff sniff, smells like burnt hair.

51:08

Because that's kind of, hundred know, plus years

51:11

old. Is it possible that

51:13

this collagen in this? No.

51:16

That that can't be. I mean, there's all these palae autologous

51:18

running around decades. I'm digging

51:20

up fossils. Right? Turns out

51:24

that, yep, fossils have collagen in them and there's types of

51:26

collagen like A and B and I are not an expert

51:28

on this and you can learn a lot about the

51:30

dinosaurs based on the

51:32

Macholian type. Like, but how is

51:34

it possible that decades of paleontology missed this? And I swear to God, I am

51:36

convinced that there's a lot

51:38

of other examples because if I really

51:42

sat down and showed you the core insights

51:44

into what you have to figure

51:46

out to suddenly realize, like, oh, the existing

51:48

system doesn't really solve the problem

51:51

build another system, it's like, oh, it seems

51:53

obvious. You're like, yeah, it took me three

51:55

years, you know. But other industries,

51:57

like, I'm convinced that

51:59

the way I'm starting to understand the world, and that's the cool

52:02

thing, right, about going through the journey. It's like,

52:04

there's a lot of not even

52:06

inefficiencies. Like, things are cobbled together in

52:08

the best possible way, there isn't some

52:10

central genius or body or something that

52:12

kind of figure this out. There's lots of stuff

52:14

I'm convinced that's kind of hiding in

52:16

plain

52:16

sight. sense because

52:18

I mean, especially probably in an engineering

52:20

world, they get very stringent about they've

52:22

taken all this calculus and understand math

52:24

and everything. But even like

52:27

physics, physics eventually had been broken. And it's

52:30

like, we haven't figured out everything. It could be

52:32

a layer on top of a

52:34

layer of maybe we've figured out this, but maybe it goes deeper of

52:36

like how gravity actually works

52:38

or anything with dark gravity and

52:40

whatever else.

52:42

I barely know anything about these things, but I'm always open to have things to solve

52:44

what they are today, but maybe there is a

52:47

different dimension that we don't

52:50

understand that is connecting everything as well. So it's like, I guess, being open

52:52

to that is what you were. And that's I think most

52:54

people just kinda get closed off and don't wanna

52:56

go that level of

52:57

deepness. You know?

53:00

Hundred percent I'm convinced if you look at any

53:02

industry and you haven't read it for

53:04

a while, you'll start to realize like, 249,

53:07

Everyone in the industry assumes that this piece of proposal has

53:10

been figured out, but actually no. It's

53:12

like somebody solved it this way in like

53:14

nineteen eighty be, and and we've

53:16

kind of been stuck on it ever since. Right?

53:18

And that's like from a process

53:20

perspective. But there's, I think,

53:22

technological perspective. Like, there's just a lot

53:24

of stuff that haven't been figured out. And so with this, it was,

53:26

like, conceptual research, theoretical

53:28

research, and then prototyping. And so your your

53:30

thoughts around these prototypes, and you're, like, oh,

53:34

they do kind of work. And then you build a commercial product, and

53:36

then you go into commercialization. Right? But

53:38

when you start to realize, I've heard it

53:40

on on your podcast. It's just persistence.

53:44

Keep banging head against that wall. Right? And

53:46

at some point, you'll start to figure out,

53:48

there's this book called how

53:51

to fly a horse. Highly

53:54

recommended. It was it was Venture capitalists told me

53:56

to read it. And it talks about

53:58

innovation. And most of us, right, think like, oh,

54:00

innovation is just like, I have this thrillion blades

54:02

of an, you know, lightning bolt of an idea,

54:04

and and I've now figured it out.

54:06

But this entire book talks about

54:09

Edison and talks about a number of

54:11

the great adventures in the world, and it

54:13

shows that innovation always looks the

54:15

same. It's like you try this, it didn't work. Like, you're solving the

54:17

next little piece of the puzzle of your large

54:20

problem, and you try this, it didn't work. This

54:22

didn't work. Oh, that can work. Okay. Now that

54:24

unlock the

54:26

next six little problems. And for each one of them, you 4 five,

54:28

six, ten, twenty things. Oh, that one solved it.

54:30

Okay. And then now next 156 ten.

54:33

Three one. Okay. We solved it. And then that unlocks the next layer

54:36

of problems and so on and so forth, and and

54:38

that's basically it. And I think when you look

54:40

at someone like Elon, that's exactly what

54:42

he's doing. Right? The number of

54:44

hours, he said, like, he he lived in that

54:46

factory. Right? He was clocking, whatever,

54:48

eighteen hours a

54:48

day, seven days a week. Yeah. So

54:49

what have you thought of our group calls so far? I

54:52

like the proposed before. I like how insightful it is,

54:54

and it's have an extension

54:56

of your interviews. That's how

54:58

it feels. And

55:00

I think that if anybody has a real project they're working on,

55:02

they can benefit a lot from it. One thing

55:04

that maybe you want to join was when

55:07

you shared the first group

55:09

call. And I heard that episode of Mike, nice little community.

55:11

It's friendly in January, and so

55:13

that was helpful.

55:16

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you being

55:17

a Patreon. No worries. Man, I I came across the

55:20

podcast a few weeks ago and I

55:22

definitely enjoyed

55:24

So I wanted to at least show my commitment at

55:26

the amount that you the

55:28

cost, I I want you to go for

55:30

the highest tier. So Yeah.

55:33

No. I appreciate that. See where you just googling like a I took up another

55:35

podcast and yours popped up. And I was like, oh,

55:37

let me check this out.

55:40

Then, you know, I listen to one and I love how in-depth in

55:42

detail. The first one I listened to was the

55:44

Meineke guy. Oh, that was a good one. That

55:46

was a good one to start off. Yeah. It

55:49

And I'm in the franchise. Right? So

55:50

while I'm in the franchise, I definitely

55:53

it definitely was a good one to start off

55:55

there. And I like the questions that

55:57

you asked, you you hold into numbers 249 so I

55:59

think I've listened to maybe sixty in the last

56:01

three weeks. Oh, wow.

56:02

Yeah. You've been binging. As far as, like,

56:04

episodes, what's been one of your favorite?

56:07

The Monarchy. Yeah.

56:08

Monarchy. Yeah. You really did

56:09

start off with I thought it said, shoot. I've been telling

56:11

everyone how great that one was. And and and he's one of

56:13

the main reasons I joined a patronite too. He was like,

56:15

man, I gotta get into his story. It

56:17

took it took me a couple weeks, but, yeah, I'd

56:20

say, yeah, I gotta hear a new

56:22

story.

56:22

So if you wanna

56:23

hear that episode with

56:26

Charles Bonfiglio, Go check out

56:28

episode one sixty five. Kinda

56:29

comfortable circle. Have you heard of a guy named

56:31

Edward Leadscalean? No.

56:35

I didn't think you had it. Oh, I don't think most people have.

56:37

I mean, it's been a long time since I've

56:39

gotten documentaries about the pyramids and stuff like that,

56:41

but it kinda 249 into this guy. They call

56:43

it the eighth wonder of the world. The Coral

56:45

Castle is basically outside Miami, Florida.

56:48

This guy is like, I see he's born eighteen

56:50

eighty seven, died in nineteen

56:52

fifty one, Actually, yeah, I went to it because was the time, I

56:54

remember seeing that documentary for years ago. I'm like, let

56:56

me stop by and see it. Basically, this little shortcut.

56:58

I mean, he's literally five foot. I think they said he

57:00

was like,

57:02

under a hundred pounds, and he moved these multi

57:04

ton coral rocks. And you

57:06

made basically a castle that's kinda gone to shit down

57:08

there. No one takes care of it or whatever. But

57:11

they think that he used the same type of physics that

57:13

they did when they built the pyramids, and it

57:16

had to do with magnetism

57:18

unlocking something like

57:20

just understanding gravity as we do today, but I don't

57:22

know. I I guess I brought that full circle since I

57:24

was talking about the pyramids in the beginning. And

57:26

then how this guy looked at

57:28

something different and no one could figure out how he

57:30

did it because overnight he would be able to

57:32

build this thing and they're like, how did this little guy

57:34

do that? And I don't know. I guess

57:36

it's again just being open minded of, hey,

57:38

just because a guy in front of you under

57:40

program, two years ahead of you, was trying to solve

57:42

the same problem. Hey. I can

57:44

still try it too. It doesn't mean like it's all done.

57:46

There's been maybe, like you said, a hundred

57:48

million people in the world doing construction.

57:50

Exactly. At this time, doesn't mean I can't figure

57:52

it out or maybe they just didn't wanna go far

57:54

enough and try hard enough to

57:56

figure it

57:56

out. Exactly. The misconception is

58:00

It's all been figured out and it's all been done and

58:02

they're all smarter than me whereas what

58:04

I'm starting to realize is the reason

58:07

that you haven't crack something like huge is

58:09

not because you're less smart. You might be of

58:12

average intelligence. The advantage isn't

58:14

in the

58:16

intelligence. It's in simply that you believe that, hey,

58:18

if I keep chiseling at this long enough,

58:20

right, I'm actually doing the exact

58:22

same thing that that all these, you know,

58:25

all the people that are figuring things out. Trust me,

58:28

they're doing the exact same thing. I

58:30

studied at one of the top construction

58:32

management research institutes in the world. Stanford, it's one

58:34

of the oldest. Trust me.

58:36

Like, all the piece these that were with me

58:38

aren't literally just Okay. Let me just

58:40

keep banging my head against

58:42

the wall. And figuring out the next little layer of problems, the next layer of

58:44

problems, the next layer of problems, the next layer of problem at

58:46

some point, five years, six years,

58:48

three years, whatever that could is, into

58:50

the journey, enough

58:52

of those little things that together,

58:54

they've now cracked some larger part

58:56

of the problem. That's how it works.

58:58

That book, how to fly a horse, like, that literally is

59:01

a whole book on on exactly that. Use something I

59:03

would point out. Most

59:05

people think that But if

59:07

I found this thing I was passionate about, then I would

59:10

dedicate fifteen thousand hours to it.

59:12

And I think it's the other

59:14

way around. When you look at my life, I I to work a eighteen

59:16

hours a day. Right? I I've really spent

59:18

the last probably thirteen, fifteen years

59:21

in my life. There's been a substantial amount of

59:23

work and a substantial amount of foregoing other

59:26

things to focus on on this this

59:28

dimension. And so the thing I'd

59:30

realize is there's a lot of

59:32

challenges it comes with. Right? There's a lot of things I missed

59:34

out on. Sometimes I'm like, no. The heck, like, is

59:36

it really worth it? But the one problem I

59:38

don't have

59:40

is meaning The one problem I don't have is, like, what's the point of what I'm

59:42

doing? Like, my life has meaning, like, this is the

59:44

thing that I but I decided this is what I'm

59:46

gonna put at this point thirty six

59:48

thousand hounders. guess I'm

59:50

to explain is is that you said like persistence

59:52

and passion, but I don't care who you

59:54

are. If you are someone that's gonna do something

59:56

for eighteen hours a day, for

59:58

three years, and you're not sick of it. God bless you. You

1:00:00

know? Like, there's definitely parts where you're like,

1:00:02

man, I I really feel like I'm sick of the teeth

1:00:04

of

1:00:05

the darn thing. Passion is what you've paid for and

1:00:07

what's cost 4. And when people would, like, come to me,

1:00:09

like, man, I'm not passionate about anything. Right?

1:00:12

Or like, What's the meaning? If

1:00:14

I only found the thing that I'm passionate about and I

1:00:16

always kind of smiling, I'm like, hey,

1:00:18

put ten thousand hours of your life into something,

1:00:20

trust me, it's gonna start

1:00:22

having meaning. Get Starlight becomes valuable because of the fact that it

1:00:24

was shitty for six months. And you didn't

1:00:26

4 do it, but you still put the time into it and

1:00:29

suddenly once you put enough hours where you're starting to get good at it and you're starting

1:00:32

to see things that other people didn't see

1:00:34

in this this relationship with it,

1:00:36

that's where I think the passion comes

1:00:38

from. I guess, the trying

1:00:40

make is that the way I've seen it work is that

1:00:42

originally there isn't passion. Maybe there's

1:00:44

just persistence. And at some point,

1:00:46

it's even like negative. Right? It's like, man,

1:00:48

I really don't like it. through

1:00:50

it, at some point, you

1:00:52

will build the passion. You've got to realize

1:00:54

that it's the all the way

1:00:55

around. I thought a pretty valuable insight that I

1:00:58

figured out the hard way. I

1:01:00

appreciate you taking the time to talk

1:01:02

about all these things and not even just

1:01:04

about a house, but now I guess

1:01:06

people thinking just because it

1:01:08

hasn't been

1:01:08

done, doesn't mean you can't be the person who does it.

1:01:10

So I don't know if there's any closing thoughts that

1:01:12

you have. A hundred percent, you know,

1:01:14

like, that's thing I've learned. It's not that you

1:01:16

can't be the person to do it. You are the person

1:01:18

to do it. Trust me. Whoever you are, if

1:01:21

you stick to it and you stick to it

1:01:23

for ten thousand hours. Like, you gotta do it.

1:01:25

That's the common policy. It's people are like,

1:01:27

oh, I'm not as talented or I'm not

1:01:29

as funded or I'm not, you know, whatever

1:01:31

the x is, but No. The

1:01:33

main kind of differentiator is is are you gonna put the ten thousand hours

1:01:35

or five thousand, fifteen thousand

1:01:37

hours into it? And

1:01:39

stick to it. And that question

1:01:42

becomes a question of fuel. The name of the game is,

1:01:44

where do you get the fuel to do that? 249 that's

1:01:46

really kind of, I think, the way to do

1:01:48

it.

1:01:49

So thanks for coming on and doing the podcast.

1:01:51

I mean, I didn't even ask you when we got started

1:01:53

or I think even on the pre interview why you

1:01:55

wanted to do the So, I mean, is

1:01:57

there any particular reason? Why? I mean, I appreciate your

1:01:59

story and all the details.

1:02:01

Sometimes people have underlying message

1:02:04

or anything like that, but I appreciate you

1:02:06

sharing your detailed story. And, hopefully, it

1:02:08

helped inspire a lot of entrepreneurs listening

1:02:10

in today. I think that that's the thing that

1:02:12

I figured out. And then I've raised fifty five

1:02:14

million bucks, and I want to study at this,

1:02:17

like, really great institution. But I think that the the

1:02:19

main thing I figured out is there's no secret. All of it hasn't been figured

1:02:21

out and the people that I figured out aren't

1:02:23

any smarter than you. All of you gotta do is

1:02:25

just pick something and stick

1:02:28

to it. And I think if I can share that with the world, then I'll be

1:02:30

happy personally. Well, thank you

1:02:31

for taking the time to do it. If there's a

1:02:34

249 for anyone to reach out and say thank you for doing

1:02:38

the interview, what's the best way for

1:02:39

him to reach you? Oh, shoot me an email renee at alice

1:02:41

technologies dot com. Alright. Well, thanks for coming

1:02:43

on, Renee. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Austin. Really

1:02:45

great to beer.

1:02:47

249 it's bad

1:02:50

when you do to

1:02:52

your wife though because then you have to crash

1:02:55

on the couch. See, I had

1:02:57

to sleep on the couch every night too, man. See, we're the same. Is

1:02:59

that helpful at all, Gary? Say

1:03:02

no. With the experience of

1:03:04

my life,

1:03:06

one star review. Yeah. Thank you. I'm used to those.

1:03:08

Which I can leave? No stars. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

1:03:10

Oh, no. Thanks, guys.

1:03:11

It was a really great

1:03:14

experience. I feel like there's

1:03:16

a lot to reflect 249. See how thank

1:03:18

you. And

1:03:20

I can connect you with somebody too. Okay.

1:03:23

I have connections on that so I can

1:03:25

help you get it custom

1:03:26

made, dirt cheap. I'll share that

1:03:28

with you. Look at that Patreon membership already

1:03:30

paying off. No. Look at

1:03:34

that. Thanks for 4 remember.

1:03:36

Oh, well, I gotta thank my business

1:03:38

partners who signed me up because I've talking

1:03:40

about

1:03:40

you. Well, awesome business partner. You're gonna have to use

1:03:43

that as a plug to tell people

1:03:44

to do the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's

1:03:46

really cool. Anyway, yeah, thanks for

1:03:48

setting this up. Get kind of the VIP treatment,

1:03:51

feel like. Well, I thought it was

1:03:53

a lot more intimate than I thought it was gonna

1:03:55

be like anyone who's thinking about doing it,

1:03:57

you'll be able 249 get involved, ask a question, you

1:03:59

know, which I don't have a lot of experience

1:04:01

with other group calls, but I would

1:04:03

assume that there's

1:04:05

kind of a hierarchy to it. But this one, if you're in there, you're

1:04:07

gonna get your shot to ask

1:04:09

an expert question. So I tried to

1:04:11

compare my group calls. I started joining

1:04:13

random entrepreneur groups and just

1:04:15

joining their group calls and try to see what they're

1:04:18

like. Dude, the one you were on and all of

1:04:20

them have kinda gone that way. They're all

1:04:22

ten x better than any other group I've been

1:04:24

in because

1:04:24

become a member to find out. 249

1:04:27

with Patreon, I heard it many

1:04:30

times because you have that many episodes of

1:04:32

sign up.

1:04:34

So that's always in the back of mine, but then I checked it out a few times.

1:04:36

And I was like, do I really wanna do this?

1:04:38

So I'll push it off a little bit

1:04:42

and you posted your goal achievement

1:04:44

of sixty nine Patreon members. And I

1:04:46

was like, you know, I've got a better time than now.

1:04:49

Originally, I was gonna go for the lower one 4 nine

1:04:52

dollars a month, but one I wanna have the

1:04:54

conversation with you. But two, I

1:04:56

always find that anytime I

1:04:58

cheap out I always find that I wanna return it upgrade

1:05:00

to what I really really wanted.

1:05:02

So that's why I'm paying the

1:05:04

higher one, if that makes sense. But

1:05:08

it just constantly pushing it off, pushing it off, and

1:05:10

then I would just say fuck it. I

1:05:12

already listened to all of them, so

1:05:14

why not?